It's an imperfect method, but the results gathered are still pretty danged interesting:

The National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project (NPMSRP) was started in March of 2009 as a method of recording and analyzing police misconduct in the United States through the utilization of news media reports to generate statistical and trending information about police misconduct in the United States.

As part of this project, credible reported incidents of misconduct are aggregated into a publicly available news feed and then added into an off-line database where duplicate entries and updates are removed and remaining unique stories are categorized for the statistical information which is presented in this report.

While the use of news reports to generate statistical data may seem strange, keep in mind that police departments do not normally release any detailed information about disciplinary matters, and sometimes they don’t release any information at all. The use of court records by themselves would only garner information about misconduct cases that were successfully prosecuted and would miss confidential settlements and cases of misconduct that were not prosecuted but did result in internal disciplinary action. Therefore, the use of media reports, while not perfect, represents the most efficient method of data gathering available at this time.

Spiff wrote:So, high-density population centers have the worst cops, or North Dakota cops are just nicer?

Well, there are more cops in high-density population centers, so more chance for abuse. Also, I guess when there's only one person every billion miles or so - like in NoDak - it takes a lot of time for the cops to go from person to person and abuse them.

Look, you have to establish context for these things. And I maintain that unless you appreciate the Fall of Constantinople, the Great Fire of London, and Mickey Mantle's fatalist alcoholism, live Freddy makes no sense. If you want to half-ass it, fine, go call Simon Schama to do the appendix.

Spiff wrote:So, high-density population centers have the worst cops, or North Dakota cops are just nicer?

Well, there are more cops in high-density population centers, so more chance for abuse. Also, I guess when there's only one person every billion miles or so - like in NoDak - it takes a lot of time for the cops to go from person to person and abuse them.

Spiff wrote:So, high-density population centers have the worst cops, or North Dakota cops are just nicer?

Well, there are more cops in high-density population centers, so more chance for abuse. Also, I guess when there's only one person every billion miles or so - like in NoDak - it takes a lot of time for the cops to go from person to person and abuse them.

That's exactly my point. Because this map doesn't take into account population density (and therefore, as you point out, cop density), it's just essentially plotting the high-population density areas of the U.S.

Show me a map of abuses per capita, or abuses divided by the number of cops in a defined area (county or ZIP Code), and then that will tell me if there is a higher percent of "thumpers" among cops in NYC or in NoDak.

It's all about percentages, man...

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

Spiff wrote:That's exactly my point. Because this map doesn't take into account population density (and therefore, as you point out, cop density), it's just essentially plotting the high-population density areas of the U.S.

Show me a map of abuses per capita, or abuses divided by the number of cops in a defined area (county or ZIP Code), and then that will tell me if there is a higher percent of "thumpers" among cops in NYC or in NoDak.

It's all about percentages, man...

That map is provided if you follow the link, along with a wealth of further data. I just posted the first map on the page.

Spiff wrote:That's exactly my point. Because this map doesn't take into account population density (and therefore, as you point out, cop density), it's just essentially plotting the high-population density areas of the U.S.

Show me a map of abuses per capita, or abuses divided by the number of cops in a defined area (county or ZIP Code), and then that will tell me if there is a higher percent of "thumpers" among cops in NYC or in NoDak.

It's all about percentages, man...

That map is provided if you follow the link, along with a wealth of further data. I just posted the first map on the page.

Lazy, filthy, robot!

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?

Judging by that lone Northeast blotch of orange in Middlesex County I'm gonna chalk that up to you can't turn off your inner Masshole driver even when you're an on-duty state trooper. Rush hour on 128 transcends the thin blue line.